RETREAT FROM SANCTIONS?

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 128, 1 June 1936, Page 8

RETREAT FROM SANCTIONS?

Any impression thai Mr. Anthony Eden is-a die-hard on the subject of continuance of sanctions is not entertained by the "Morning Post." In a left-hand way that paper's diplomatic writer understands Mr. Eden's view to be that "before sanctions are raised something must be done for the security" of nervous States. The implication is that, if certain assurances are given, Mr. Eden as Foreign Secretary will agree to the raising of sanctions which have ceased to be of any value irj maintaining Emperor Haile Selassie in Abyssinia, and which, if regarded a3 punishment of Italy, are deemed more dangerous than reformative. The main point emerging from the "Morning Post's" 'contention is that sanctions must go. If their dropping is to be made contingent on a discussion of all the related points (including the question of giving Italy a recognition in Abyssinia Uiat was refused to Japan in Manchuria) then it will take a long time to get rid of them. But a "short cut" course, based on "no victimisation," by Italy or anyone else, of little nations that "sanctioned" the aggressor, may be not beyond the resources of diplomacy. If the League of Nations were what it was intended to be, the League, and not two or three Governments in it, would give the lead in League matters. In that case, the Laval-Hoare incident would not have arisen. Also, if the League were a properlywelded body, Mr. Eden's reply to the Italian Ambassador —that raising of sanctions is a matter for the League —would be all-sufficient. "Let the League decide." But as the League has no force of its own, and as, in any single issue, the number of Governments in it that are themselves prepared to use force are limited, diplomacy operates between certain Governments in such a way that the League is apt to become a ratifying rather than an originating force. Consequently Mr. Eden is reported as undertaking to submit the Italian request for raising of sanctions to the 'British Cabinet, even while he maintains that it is a matter for the I League. The two courses are not I incompatible, but the division of rcI sponsibility between Geneva and the capitals hampers the execution of a policy of going forward, or even (as in this case) of a policy of retracting. That the peoples of the League countries should be leit in a state of doubt as to policy, while dictatorship countries that defy Geneva have no such doubt, is no help to the international cause. There is an inequality that internationalism must remove.